Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1920, Page 14

Current Topics

Cardinal Logue and the War A “statesman,” now,'a shining light in the Cabinet of a l l the talents, one© got a fit because we published Dr. O’Dwyer’s statement that Russia (where our Britisn troops recently left a nice record for brutality) caused the war. It was, of course, a dangerous thing to have brains in the Empire for some -years past, and it was a criminal thing to tell the truth and shame the devil. As we lately pointed out, Lord Loreburn has proved how right Dr. O’Dwyer was, and how wrongif that required proof!-the ‘ statesman” was. Now comes Cardinal Logue, expressing frankly, in a letter to the Bishop of Nottingham, his opinion as to the cause of the war, which we were told by our infallible political guides was fought for Religion, Justice, and Self-de-termination. In the course of his letter (quoted in the New Leader the Cardinal says: “The real spite against the Pope is because he did not take sides. Of course, he could not; and it is well he did not. He would find himself in a very awkward position now, when light is being thrown on the real objects which inspired the war. In fact, except the case of America, the whole business seems to have been a game of grab. This has occupied the so-called Peace Conference more than a real effort to make peace, each party trying to see what they can get out of the scramble.” It may be worth mentioning that Ludendorff says the Pope was anti-German; but the infallible and accurate historians of the Dunedin Star said his peace proposals were inspired by Berlin. And they know as much about the matter! , British Brutality The Melbourne Advocate, of February 28, publishes certain letters that passed between Mr. Mahon and the Australian Minister for Defence, concerning interned German priests. The letters reveal that colonial Governments are capable of out-Hunning the Huns, just as well as Lloyd George Governments in Ireland. The state of things revealed by Mr. Mahon’s inquiries is simply appalling. The brutal treatment of those poor priests, for no reason but their nationality, is as black a stain on the Empire as anything that happened in Ireland or India. It shows what braggarts and what disgusting hypocrites Imperialists are, and how foul is the press which spread lies about enemies while cloaking crimes of our own. It is a characteristic story of broken pledges, of British bullying, of coarseness and insults offered to men whose lives were consecrated to God by men who boasted of British chivalry and calumniated Germany. How far the persecution and indignities were carried is made evident by the revelation that those priests were compelled by our British gentlemen and Christians to clean the latrines of their guards . In Ceylon, on board ship, and in an Australian camp frightfulness of the British type was practised on the priests. It is remarkable, too, as an example of British fair play that Protestant German ministers, arrested at the same time as the Oblate Fathers, were released after a short detention. The Catholic priests were not in Australia voluntarily, they had no friends to defend them, their only hope lay in trusting to British chivalry and fair play, and what they got by virtue of those much-belauded virtues is so shocking that it clamors for an immediate inquiry. The incident is in keeping with the inhuman British policy which condemned a girl who gave her life for sufferers during the epidemic to die without a priest in Manly Quarantine. We are a great people. Our Empire is a noble thing in the sight of God and man. Australia, as well as Ireland, India, and Egypt, proclaims it aloud.

Catholic Soldiers ■ r In Catholic Soldiers . (Longmans), ' Father Charles Plater, S.J., has collected .from, “sixty chaplains and others” a . valuable mass of evidence referring ' chiefly to Catholics in the British armies during the war. He sets down frankly the views of his witnesses, and he tries to make no case pro or con. There is light and shade in the picture, and the light, fortunately, predominates. Nobody can read the book without' being convinced that religion was a very real consolation to our soldiers, and that it stood all tests where other creeds failed and helped the men as nothing else could help them in those years of terror. There were falls, of course, for human nature is weak; there were disappointments, for God’s grace is not given lightly to all who will not correspond with it. The book before us gives us every side of the story, and it makes edifying and interesting reading. That the Irish soldiers and the Lancashire men stood forth from the rest is not surprising. There were many wonderfully edifying cases among the English and Scots and colonials also. Only the Mexicans seem to have been behind the rest. A chaplain wrote: “I remember giving Holy Communion one morning in a village church to 900 of the Cannacht Rangers. The cure helped me, with tears streaming down his cheeks. At the end he said, ‘These men have all the faces of children, as they kneel to receive their Lord in Holy Communion.’ ” So candidly and frankly does the author set down his evidence that one reviewer complained that he found the book contradictory. In reply to this charge Father Plater wrote to the Catholic Times the following letter in which he draws his inferences from the evidence contained in his book:

"Your kindly reviewer of the report on Catholic Soldiers, lately published by Messrs. Longmans, thinks that the evidence contained in it is so contradictory that no definite conclusions can be drawn from it.

"Some diversity was, of course, to be expected, according to the different conditions in which the chaplains had to work. But it would not be difficult to draw up a number of definite conclusions which stand in marked contrast with those so frankly and fairly drawn by the editor of the non-Catholic report (The, Army and Religion). For instance, we may say, on the whole, that—

"1. The faith of Catholic men has not been weakened by the spectacle of war. Their belief in God remains unshaken.

"2. They are not fatalists. "3. Practically all have a working knowledge of their religion. They respect it and do not criticise it. "4. They have a definite moral standard, and know when they have departed from it. They know how to put themselves right after a moral fall. "5. They scarcely ever refuse the Sacraments. Though they seldom ask for them spontaneously, they expect them to be offered, and are glad to have them. "6. The great majority of them pray daily. The majority of them 'go to their duties.' "7. They turn to their religion when death is at hand.

"8. They are on intimate terms with their priests, whose authority is not questioned. "The list might be continued. " 'Just what we might expect,' it may be said. Yes, of course; but these characteristics mark off the Catholic soldiers from those of all the denominations. Contrast the Catholic with the non-Catholic report, and you will find yourself in two different worlds. "It would be a pity were the significance of the Catholic report missed. To say that we have had our failures is merely to say that we are human. There are plenty of black sheep in the fold, and plenty of white ones outside. But the point is that there is a fold, and the Catholic men know it. - ' '.As the report is not really my work (I have merely put Jin order a mass of documentary evidence, without trying to prove or disprove anything) "I feel

that like any other reader of the documents I may discuss their significance.”,, -mildcS' The Support of the Hierarchy 1 -U It is rather an amusing thing to reflect that : the editors of our New Zealand papers, from Auckland to the. Bluff, carry on faithfully and stupidly their campaign against Sinn Fein, repeating ad nauseam -the l lies that are cabled out here by their ; Brithun masters. Everybody who has followed the lies and the exposures of our editors during the war must have a ; right conception of the mental equipment of those poor people who imagine^that the public of the Dominion is swayed in the least by their piffle. Consider that while they have calumniated and belied Sinn Fein, that movement has had not only the support of the best brains in Ireland, but also of the most upright and learned men in Ireland and America. A movement which has the American Cardinals behind it does. not need the approval of local penny-a-liners; and their ridiculous attacks are made more ridiculous in the eyes of thinking men by the continual expressions of approbation coming from ' the American Bishops. We take it for granted that nobody in even New Zealand would be so foolish as to think that the editor of one of our dailies has a hundredth part of the learning or of the experience of an average bishop; and we can safely assert that even the most humble prelate would be far more likely to give a candid opinion on the merits of the case than the most learned of our editors. If there were no other argument in favor of Sinn Fein, the fact that it has the support of Archbishop Redwood, Archbishop Mannix, Archbishop Kelly, Cardinals Gibbons and O’Connellall of whom have studied the case deeply and gone profoundly into its bearingswould be an extrinsic argument of great weight. The cause that they support must be just; for they would not support an unjust cause. The cause they support must be reasonable ; for they would not lend their great names to one that was not reasonable. Moreover, they have first-hand knowledge of the matter, whereas our local editors write to order and have no higher mission in life than to earn their bread as slaves of that low institution, the British Propaganda. As one more instance of high, favor shown to Sinn Fein, take this letter, written to the meeting in New York for the organisation of the Irish Fund; the writer was Archbishop Hayes: “I am enclosing my personal contribution of one thousand dollars to the Irish Fund. After a very satisfactory conference with Mr. Eamon de Valera, President of the Irish Republic, I am convinced that his programme for the agricultural, industrial, and commercial development of Ireland is entirely ’ practical and constructive. Ibe present crisis in Ireland is most momentous, because it has gone beyond the bounds of a purely domestic issue, and has grown into a world problem, under a world impulse and towards a world ideal evoked by the great war and proclaimed by the United States. “The centuries-old struggle of the Irish people tor self-determination and self-government is to-day a matter of grave concern to the civilised world. The permanent peace of mankind cannot be assured until Erxxx s long and unbroken dream of racial emancipation awakens to the dawn of fulfilment.” The Greater Ireland V . It is no easy task to estimate what’is the population of the Greater Ireland: that is, of the Irish race at Home and abroad to-day. One might go back a long way and , make an attempt to calculate the numers driven from Ireland by the bloodhounds of CromweH, but to do so would have little practical mean--1 f OW * the sake of the information it conveys, let us say. that it has been computed that 70,000 Irish rtbijr • ba f nisbed linto 1 into slavery in th West Indies ? hUn i Then ’' w hen the Brithuns broke them faith and perjured themselves • by making a

scrap of paper of the Treaty of Limerick, three-fourths of the army <of^Sarsfield'went away to. fight for France —or for any Power that mights lead them against the hated traitors. Many others went to serve in the armies of Austria J and Spain, while a smaller number found their way to Russia Between ; 1690 and f. 1760 it is estimated that three-quarters of a million settled in France. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the exodus to. America began. The, Hunnish laws that crushed Irish trade drove the people forth in thousands they turned up again in thousands when Washington called for men to break the tyrant’s power in their new home; just as their forbears did at Fontenoy, they did in the hard battles of the War of Independence; and Washington knew and acknowledged gratefully how much he owed to those exiles from Erin who would fight to death to defeat ' the English forces and their savage allies. They won distinction in the wars of America one has but to con the records of the Civil War to see how bravely, the Irish fought and how many leaders they gave to America. Not only in America did they win fame and glory. The name of the Dillons and MacMahons is remembered to this day in France. In Spain the O’Donnells, and in Austria the Taafes and the Nugents became nobles by their ability and prowess. Russia had a General O’Rourke,-Turkey had its O’Reilly Pasha, Hungary had General Guyon, a Limerick man. But all that is belonging to the —that past of which we have so much reason to be proud; that past that is the shame of England. If we take the Greater Ireland as embracing only those who had Irish parents, or at most Irish grandparents, we shall find that we have quite enough friends in the world to feel confident when we know to-day that they are with us in the final fight for justice and freedom. The following table (from the Irish World) will be found useful: Persons Born in Ireland or of Irish Parentage. Ireland ... ... ... ... 4,100,000 Great Britain ... ... ... 3,000,000 United States ... ... ... 11,900,000 Canada (including Newfoundland) 1,200,000 Australasia (including New Zealand and Tasmania) ... ... 1,400,000 South America ... ... ... 1,000,000 Asia ... ... ... ... 100,000 European Continent ... ... 300,000 South Africa ... ... ... 100,000 „ 23,100,000 Persons of Irish Grandparentage. Great Britain ... ... ... 4,000,000/ United States ... ... ... 15,000,000 Canada (including Newfoundland) 1,300,000 Australasia (including New Zea- . land and Tasmania) ... ... 1,300,000 South Africa ... ... ... 150,000 South America ... ... ... 1,500,000 Asia ... ... ... ... 200,000 European Continent ... ... 500,000 23,950,000 This calculation, which is based, so far as they are available, on official returns of nationality, gives us an Irish race 47 millions strong. The actual number of persons in the world at the present time who were born in Ireland of Irish parents is over, eight millions, while there are nearly 15 millions of persons born out of Ireland, but both of whose parents were Irish. We have excluded from this any calculation of the number of persons of Irish descentthat is, persons who are more than two generations removed from Ireland. If these were included there would be found some 10 millions more of the Irish race on the European Continent and another 10 pillions elsewhere. As it stands, the Irish race forms one of the most numerous races in the world—equal to the French or Italians. There used to be an old boast that the sun never sets on the English dominions. It is a literal 1 fact that the sun never sets on the Irish race.